MMT shows us how a modern monetary system works, such as that of the U.S., which means how such a nation’s money supply works and, by extension, how its federal government spending works. Many people, for example, are still under the impression that our money system is still operating under a gold standard, by which American currency, the U.S. dollar, was backed by gold. But American currency has not been backed by gold since 1971, when President Richard Nixon closed the gold window, which means that Nixon ended the international convertibility of the U.S. dollar to gold. Nixon did so out of sheer necessity as the U.S. began to run out of gold with which it could back the U.S. dollar during the Vietnam War (or the American War, as the Vietnamese call it).

As a consequence of that Nixon shock, most other countries also soon abandoned the gold standard, as the Bretton Woods system of international financial exchange became inoperable without direct convertibility of the U.S. dollar. This meant that the U.S. dollar became a purely fiat currency. Without having to convert U.S. dollars to gold, President Nixon could continue to spend on U.S. military aggression against Vietnam without fiscal constraints. The only constraints he, then, faced in waging imperialist wars were real resource constraints, such as metal for production of weaponry and human bodies for the war machine.

Similarly, today, when the economy is stagnant or in decline for most working class Americans, who are unemployed or underemployed, the U.S. government can afford to spend without fiscal constraints. Again, the only constraints are real resource constraints. These are all facts of a sovereign monetary system, such as that of the U.S., which are articulated by modern monetary theory (MMT).

One of the key policy proposals, which follows from an understanding of MMT, is the job guarantee programme. Basically, since 1971, we have had the economic policy space to end involuntary unemployment as we know it. Imagine that. So many social ills, which arise out of involuntary unemployment, such as poverty, crime, family instabilities, and lack of economic opportunities, could be greatly reduced or eliminated. Anyone who is in need of a job and is willing and able to work can be provided a job under an MMT-based job guarantee programme. Again, as noted above, most Americans are still under the impression that money is a finite thing, that it’s backed by gold or that taxes must be collected from working people in order to fund federal government spending. That is not the case.

The U.S. government creates dollars out of thin air by simply printing paper currency or making an electronic entry on a computer screen. The U.S. government does this when it funds forever wars of aggression against the world. And the U.S. government did this when they bailed out the bad banks during the Global Financial Crisis of 2007/2008. And the U.S. government can do this today for socially beneficial government spending, such as the creation of a federal job guarantee programme or federally-funded cradle-to-grave health care or education.

The only thing we lack in order to provide economic security, jobs, education, and health care to all American families in need is the political will, as leading MMT scholar Dr. L. Randall Wray, often teaches his students (such as your author) at the University of Missouri-Kansas City as well as in public appearances and broadcast media interviews. But, perhaps, the lack of political will in support of an MMT-based job guarantee programme is changing.

A new article in The Nation has broached the question of the job guarantee policy proposal in an article entitled “It’s Time for the Government to Give Everyone a Job: A new plan from CAP is a promising first step” by David Dayen. It’s interesting, however, that the author claimed that the idea of “guaranteed employment for anyone who wants a job” has been “kicking around the left for a long time” because it really has not. If it has, it’s been way under the radar of broadcast media. Even the Pacifica Radio network, the nation’s leading left broadcaster is essentially ignorant of MMT and the job guarantee proposal. With the exception of Pacifica Radio’s Guns and Butter, which broadcast seven consecutive one-hour weekly radio shows on the 2012 MMT Summit in Rimini, Italy, virtually all left broadcasters are either unaware of MMT and the job guarantee policy proposal, or they refuse to acknowledge it. Occasionally, Against the Grain will discuss the idea of an unconditional basic income (UBI) guaranteed to all, whether employed or not. But, even then, both the interviewers and the interviewees seem ignorant of MMT because they speak of taxes funding federal government spending, including for the basic income proposal, which is technically inaccurate. If they only knew about MMT, the arguments of UBI advocates would be that much stronger. But, then, if the public knew about MMT, the cat would be out of the bag, so to speak. And the public would likely demand that the government start spending modern money for public purpose. This is probably why Senator Bernie Sanders decided to not inform the American people about MMT or the feasible MMT-based job guarantee programme. Bernie Sanders’ chief economist in the Senate Minority Budget Committee, and on his presidential primary campaign trail, was a former professor of mine, Dr. Stephanie Kelton, a leading MMT and job guarantee programme advocate.

It’s also notable that David Dayen’s article in The Nation didn’t even mention MMT, or how the job guarantee programme could be funded. But, then, The Nation is not a very radical institution. In fact, it’s often quite politically and intellectually dishonest. Dayen merely invoked one figure of “a cost of about one-quarter of Donald Trump’s tax cut”, which misleads readers into thinking taxpayer dollars would be paying for the government programme.

Messina

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THE NATION—[19 MAY 2017] It’s Time for the Government to Give Everyone a Job: A new plan from CAP is a promising first step.

David Dayen

The Center for American Progress has been a White House in waiting for mainstream Democratic candidates for over a decade now. When it places something on the agenda, that becomes part of mainstream discussion on the center left. And at its Ideas Conference this week, it embraced one idea that has been kicking around the left for a long time: guaranteed employment for anyone who wants a job.

In “Toward a Marshall Plan for America”, CAP frames this as an answer to growing despair and acute economic pain bred by stagnant wages and lack of opportunity. But few advocates who have been pushing a federal-job guarantee for so long were considered or even cited in the proposal. And while they’re generally thrilled that their life’s work has entered a broader conversation, they’re concerned that something is getting lost in translation.

The federal-job-guarantee concept goes back to Huey Long’s Share Our Wealth plan in the 1930s. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. endorsed “employment for everyone in need of a job” in the civil-rights era. Under this framework, the government would fund jobs with a living wage and benefits similar to public-sector workers’. The open-ended program would be funded as needed, expandable in recession, and contractable when the economy recovers. Government would become the employer of last resort.

CAP’s version is somewhat targeted. Its focus is on non-college graduates specifically, which it says have been disproportionately left behind economically. Real income fell for workers without a college degree from 2000 to 2016, and mortality rates for this subset have grown. So CAP proposes a commission for a “national Marshall plan” to fund living-wage jobs at $15 an hour. “An expandable public employment program could, for example, have a target of maintaining the employment rate for prime-age workers without a bachelor’s degree at the 2000 level of 79 percent,” according to the policy brief. Right now, that would mean 4.4 million jobs at a cost of about one-quarter of Donald Trump’s tax cut.

[snip]

I talked to several supporters of public jobs and the federal-jobs-guarantee concept. All of them welcomed CAP to the discussion. “They’re invoking the language of a job guarantee which is a permanent program, that’s great,” said Pavlina Tcherneva of the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College. But while the adoption shows the momentum for public job creation as a political force, job-guarantee supporters had several concerns about CAP’s formulation.

“Their discussion was heavily focused on the provision of employment for those with a high-school diploma or less,” said Sandy Darity of Duke University, one of the job guarantee’s greatest champions. To him, this leaves behind large segments of the population who might need jobs. For example, Darity points out, the unemployment rate for African Americans with some college education is higher than for whites who have never finished high school. (Racial issues are “really repressed in their analysis,” Darity noted.) The recently incarcerated and recent veterans also have high unemployment rates. “We think anybody who cannot find work in the private sector should have the option,” Darity concluded.

Solely targeting non-college graduates, a measure clearly designed to serve a political goal (much of the CAP paper details the shift of the working-class vote in the Midwest from Barack Obama to Donald Trump), necessarily limits the reach of the program. “How would this plan have helped after the Great Recession [or Global Financial Crisis], when 80,000 people a month were losing jobs, including skilled workers with college degrees?” asked Stephanie Kelton, economics professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and former budget aide to Bernie Sanders. “If we’re genuinely trying to achieve full employment, we shouldn’t be targeting 79 percent labor-force participation. We should eliminate involuntary unemployment.”

Dr. Stephanie Kelton, Dr. William K. Black, and Messina. Most Fridays at UMKC featured economics seminars, which often invited economists from around the world to speak at UMKC. Then we would often have dinner gatherings afterwards, such as this one.

[The “UMKC Economics” image was created by the UMKC Economics Club during 2013, when your author was studying economics, including modern monetary theory, at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where he earned his degree in Economics and graduated with honours. Your author was a member of the UMKC Economics Club at that time.]

Well, what if our government could guarantee everyone a basic income, whether one has a job or not? Since the Global Financial Crisis of 2007/2008, when millions of Americans lost their homes and jobs, the USA has found itself in a very similar scenario like the Great Depression, with too few jobs in the economy, wages too often inadequate, and widening income inequality. In this context, radical or revolutionary economic policies are being considered, particularly on the left.

On free speech radio (and other broadcast media), the topic of a universal basic income (UBI, or unconditional basic income) has been increasingly registering on the popular consciousness radar. Lumpenproletariat noted previously, for example, sociologist Dr. Erik Olin Wright‘s advocacy for the UBI as well as Dr. Kathi Weeks on life beyond work, or postwork imaginaries. [1] Much of the arguments in favour of a UBI revolve around the structural aspects of involuntary unemployment, underemployment, and precarious employment, all of which contribute to poverty and a phenomenon known as the working poor. Saliently, however, most of the advocates for a UBI are unaware of the revolutionary (and viable) job guarantee policy proposal, which is addressed in the field of heterodox economics, and which incorporates modern monetary theory (MMT, or modern money theory). As the name suggests, an MMT-based job guarantee programme can provide a job to anyone willing and able to work, in other words, achieve full employment (or solve involuntary unemployment). And, as one of my former economics professors, heterodox economist Dr. L. Randall Wray says, the job guarantee can function as a buffer stock which can absorb redundant or unemployed workers when the private sector economy slows down and companies lay people off, or provide an active pool of workers to draw from when the economy picks back up again. (Another name for the job guarantee programme is employer of last resort, which is a term derived from the economic terminology of the lender of last resort.)

In an article published by Truthout this morning (see below), entitled “Why Socialist Job Guarantees Are Better Than Universal Basic Income” and written by Alexander Kolokotronis and Sam Nakayama, the authors cite heterodox economist Dr. Pavlina Tcherneva, a contributor to New Economic Perspectives, the economics blog started at the Economics Department at the University of Missouri-Kansas City by Dr. Stephanie Kelton, a leading advocate of the MMT-based job guarantee. For years, Dr. Kelton and others have consistently held a dismissive stance toward the UBI because simply giving everybody a particular amount of income changes nothing about income inequality, which is the main point to addressing involuntary unemployment. In this new Truthout article, the authors cited a 2006 paper by Dr. Tcherneva in which she argued that “solely implementing UBI would lead to ‘stagflation‘, i.e., ‘low employment and high prices’.” [See video below for a brief presentation on the MMT-based job guarantee programme by Dr. Tcherneva as well as a more in-depth presentation on MMT, federal budget deficits, and the job guarantee programme by Dr. Stephanie Kelton.]

The thrust of the Truthout article is to argue in favour of an MMT-based job guarantee programme (as opposed to the New Deal-style job guarantee programmes, which depended on taxation for funding in the wake of the Great Depression when the USA and the rest of the world was still on the gold standard where currency is finite since each dollar, for example, had to be backed by a dollar’s worth of gold). Since the USA and the rest of the world went off the gold standard in 1971, the USA is the sovereign currency issuer of the US dollar, which means it can afford to spend without fiscal constraints. The authors correctly assert that the only constraints are real resources constraints. Unfortunately, the authors deemed it necessary to argue entirely against the UBI, which is not necessarily incompatible with a job guarantee programme. Dr. Tcherneva’s arguments against the UBI are based upon a scenario of the state “solely implementing UBI”, but not as a supplement to the job guarantee programme or other social service programmes.

Notably, the Truthout article relied largely on conservative, or right-wing, arguments to discredit the UBI. The authors cited articles by The Wall Street Journaland the “conservative-leaning magazine”, The Federalist, which claim that “the [UBI] idea is to end all social welfare programs and instead just cut everyone a check.” But whose idea is that exactly? And, if that’s a bad idea, then why pursue it? Yes, there are competing and contending political ideologies. The left doesn’t need to follow the lead of the right. It’s up to each of us, individually or in groupings, to endorse, promote, advocate for, and organise around those policies, which we would like to see in our society. There’s no reason why the UBI cannot function as a supplement to the job guarantee programme alongside traditional employment and existing social services. If supporters of the job guarantee programme (or the UBI) fear political responses from the right-wing of the political spectrum, then we will be inhibited in the scope of our political possibilities.

Indeed, some of these political possibilities can be, and are, informed by the political realities of the past. To that end, the Truthout article offers a few paragraphs on “A Chartalist Understanding of Money”. Unfortunately, in narrowly focusing on chartalism, the result is an obfuscation of MMT (modern monetary theory), which offers us the most accurate (and undisputed) description of how a sovereign monetary system functions, such as that of the United States since 1971. Also, the article provides a sense of the history of job guarantee programmes by surveying a few examples, such as the Argentine Jefes Program, the Indian National Rural Employment Programme, and the French National Workshops of 1848, which influential economist and philosopher Dr. Karl Marx chronicled in his classic The Class Struggles in France. The article cited heterodox economists and expert scholars of job guarantee programmes, Dr. L. Randall Wray and Dr. Mathew Forstater; both are Professors of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

It’s interesting to note, as the article describes:

The real reason that elites resist full employment is because they facilitate class consciousness and help build dual power. This elite resistance is exactly the reason why the left must press all the harder to make full employment a reality, and take charge of its policy design. Full employment both requires class consciousness and creates it.

The case of the French National Workshops exemplified a democratising effect in the workplace, as “disgruntled artisans and skilled craftsmen demanded the socialization of their labor”;

the National Workshops mobilized large sections of the French proletariat and delivered real wage gains, before elites destroyed the program.

Naturally, elites resisted the Workshops as a waste of public resources and a locus for radical political agitation from the working class.

The industrialized cities faced a “collapse of the domination of the notables over the working class and the emergence of working class consciousness…” The workshops played a ‘key role in pitting the working class against the state and thus in shaping a common consciousness among the lower classes.” Perhaps because of this, at the end of June of 1848, the government closed the National Workshops.

In the case of the Argentine Jefes Program,

The program did face opposition from business communities, as the program became the de facto minimum wage in rural areas where much work fell below the minimum wage.

In an effort to wind down the program, a faction of government officials moved to reduce or eliminate job creation and substitute direct cash payouts. In interviews with participants, economists Randall Wray and [Pavlina] Tcherneva found not a single participant who preferred the cash payments to working. Argentines valued being out in the community and having a sense of doing something, and this exceeded the simple cash wage.

Universal Basic Income (UBI) is on the rise. Pilot programs providing income on an unconditional basis are being implemented at national, provincial and municipal levels in places like Finland, Scotland, Kenya, the Canadian province of Ontario, the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands, and Oakland, California. Anti-work advocates see UBI as a victory against neoliberal productivist ideology and subjectivity (what some have referred to as “homo economicus“). Workerists see UBI as a way of tipping the balance of power in favor of labor.

While these qualities of basic income are ones worth aspiring to, the policy contains macroeconomic deficiencies if adopted universally. In addition, UBI advocates overlook one of the fundamental questions of power in political economy: Who controls the means of production? One way to address this question is through a self-managed socialist job guarantee. That is to say, providing a job to anyone who wants one, within a self-management institutional framework.

UBI as Hyperinflationary

Economist Pavlina Tcherneva has argued there could be disastrous results from wide-scale implementation of UBI. In a paper from 2006, Tcherneva argues that solely implementing UBI would lead to “stagflation,” i.e., “low employment and high prices.” She writes:

In order to coax [UBI] recipients back into the labour market, employers will need to offer higher wages (which, at first approximation, is a desirable result). However, soon thereafter, these same employers will also raise prices, to cover the increases in wage costs. As a consequence, rising prices will erode the purchasing power of the [UBI] payment, which will affect particularly those recipients who did not return to the labour market. To maintain the objective of the universal guarantee and provide just levels of standard living, there will be pressure to revise the [UBI] benefit upward. If this happens it will further induce some exit from the labour market, drop in output, a compensatory rise in wages and prices and further drop in [UBI] purchasing power. This vicious cycle renders the income guarantee self-defeating. Note that, if the benefit is continually increased — the income guarantee becomes not just inflationary, but hyperinflationary.

Within a political-economic climate preoccupied with budget-neutrality (i.e., balanced budgets; running no fiscal deficits), “if taxes are raised … they will also induce workers on the margin to exit the labour force.” This coupling of a rising UBI to compensate for increased prices, with rising taxes (again, partially resulting from an obsession with budget-neutrality), will result in declining output.

“The ‘Angry Birds’ Approach to Understanding Deficits in the Modern Economy” by Dr. Stephanie Kelton (Department of Economics, University of Missouri-Kansas City), delivered at the UMKC Student Union Theater on 19 NOV 2014 in an event organised by the Jobs Now! Coalition. (Yours truly was in the audience for that event, as a then-student of economics at UMKC.)

UPDATE—[14 DEC 2016] The Guns and Butter broadcast for December 14, 2016 was a fund drive special, which focused on the work of Dr. William Engdahl. (Also see transcript draft below.) [3]

UPDATE—[21 DEC 2016] The Guns and Butter broadcast for December 21, 2016, entitled “The Incredible Trump Deception” also focused on the work of Dr. William Engdahl. [4]

UPDATE—[28 DEC 2016] The Guns and Butter broadcast for December 28, 2016, entitled “The Lost Hegemon: How the CIA Lost Its Holy War Crusade” also focused on the work of Dr. William Engdahl. Excerpts of this interview with Dr. Engdahl were previously aired during a fund drive special broadcast (14 DEC 2016). [5]

Messina

***

[Working draft transcript of actual radio broadcast by Messina for Lumpenproletariat and Guns and Butter.]

GUNS AND BUTTER—[7 DEC 2016] [SASHA LILLEY: “Thank you all, who’ve called and pledged. We made the match. Thank you all so much.” C.S. SOONG: (overlapping) “Thank you sooo much.” MIKE BIGGS: “And this is KPFA; KPFB in Berkeley, 88.1; KFCF in Fresno, 97.5; K24ABR in Santa Cruz; and online at kpfa.org. It is 1pm; up next is Guns and Butter.”]

“F. William Engdahl is an international best-selling author and political economist. He has specialised for more than 30 years in geopolitical analysis of global events with special focus on the interaction of economics with politics. He is currently Visiting Professor of Geopolitics at Northwest University in Xi’an [city], China. Among his best-known books are A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics; Gods of Money: Wall Street and the Death of the American Century; Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation; Target China: How Washington and Wall Street Plan to Cage the Asian Dragon. His latest English book is—The Lost Hegemon: Whom the gods would destroy—about the CIA and political Islam. It was published in March of 2016. (c. 1:46)

“The Lost Hegemon: Whom the gods would destroy is our thank-you gift, our premium today on Guns and Butter for a donation to KPFA of $110 dollars. We will talk a lot more about the specifics of The Lost Hegemon: Whom the gods would destroy—about the CIA and political Islam. But today’s interview with William Engdahl is ‘The Incredible Trump Deception’. (c. 2:19)

“So, Mike, let’s get started with the very beginning of that talk I had with William Engdahl.” (c. 2:25)

Begin pre-recorded interview

BONNIE FAULKNER: “William Engdahl, welcome.”

DR. F. WILLIAM ENGDAHL: “Thank you. I’m glad to be with you, Bonnie.”

On Trump’s true pedigree, which is “stagecraft“, but not the working class populism Trump portrayed during his campaigning. Dr. Engdahl cited an article he previously wrote about Donald Trump’s background entitled “The Mafia Don”.

BONNIE FAULKNER: “Your latest article is entitled ‘The Dangerous Deception Called ‘The Trump Presidency’‘. [6] Donald Trump put forth some populist ideas in his presidential campaign, such as his goal to have good relations with Russia; his criticism of the vicious ISIS jihadis; support for rebuilding domestic infrastructure; among others. What do you consider to be the dangerous deception?” (c. 2:56)

DR. F. WILLIAM ENGDAHL: “The dangerous deception is, number one, Donald Trump. Who he is, as a person, is not at all what people or the world, really, is hoping. He is a complete, uh, showman, a work of, I dunno, stagecraft. He has no qualification and no business being anywhere near the White House, and certainly not as president of the world’s largest and most powerful superpower.

“That being said, we have to look behind the people, who are elected president. Look at how it was with Obama when he came in on the banner of [hope]. And what did he do? The first thing he did was ramp up the Afghan War with a 30,000 troop surge—the Patraeus Strategy. And, ever since then, he’s been in Arab Spring, uh, wars across the Middle East: the destruction of Libya, trying to destroy Syria, uh. (c. 4:12)

“Every single financial appointment of Obama was dictated by Robert Rubin and the people at Goldman Sachs and Citi Group. So, we’ve had that experience with Obama. And, now, we have this thing called the Trump Presidency.

“Well, we, as human beings, love to hope. We love to have hopes. And I know so many, normally intelligent people , commentators, analysts, like myself, uh, who have a sense of world politics, who are just taken in by this shill called Donald Trump. The man’s—look at his background. And this I did back in March/April in a piece I wrote on my website called ‘The Mafia Don’. (c. 5:02)

“Donald Trump is a protégé of organised crime, full stop. His mentor was a mafia lawyer in New York named Roy Cohn. And Roy Cohn, who’s famous—infamous in the Joseph McCarthy hearings back during the ’50s and the Cold War. Roy Cohn was a lawyer for the mob. He was connected with the Cardinal Spellman of New York back in the ’50s and the ’60s—one of the leading architects of the Cold War.

“And Roy Cohn, as a human being, was a—if you want to use the term—a despicable specimen. And he would take Donald Trump to Studio 54. I remember when I was—in those days, back in the 1970s, working as a journalist in New York City; and Studio 54 was infamous for its cocaine parties or its, uh, glitteria, that would come there. And Donald Trump, in his autobiography, some years ago, describes going there with Roy Cohn and watching eight breathtakingly beautiful models fornicating in the middle of the floor of Studio 54. Now, what role Donald Trump did or didn’t play in that, he didn’t bother to say. (c. 6:25)

“But, okay, let’s say he underwent a remarkable transformation. Then, we have to look a little bit into: who are the people around Donald Trump? In my view, Donald Trump is pure showtime. He’s a choice of, what I call, the American patriarchs, the David Rockefellers, the George Soros, and so forth. And the idea that a maverick, a real upsetter, a man of the raw blue-collar working people, who is gonna reverse all these trade policies and do this, that, and the other thing to make America great again, even though the banks of Wall Street aren’t gonna like it and the military industrial—whatever. That the people like David Rockefeller would sit there and have their jaws open and say, my gawd, we can’t do anything to stop this Trump phenomenon! What a crock! What a nonsense! You know? Wake up. (c. 7:29)

On the political theatre of Trump’s staged political competition, ‘perhaps even Hillary Clinton’s role was staged’, in exchange for a secured two-term presidency in 2020 or 2024, speculated Dr. Engdahl.

“Look at this. This was orchestrated. Probably, the Hillary thing was orchestrated as a part of the same theatre. But, certainly, the Cruz and Rubio and Ben Carson and Jeb Bush, you know, they were all given their roles to play that Trump would emerge as this phenomenon. You know; he certainly did, but with the full support of the critical media going—attacking Trump, so that the, uh, man on the street would think: Oh, this guy is against the mainstream establishment. Let’s look at him more closely. Well, let’s take a look at this grassroots revolution of Donald Trump in the form of the people, he’s appointed.

“Take, for example, Mike Flynn, a three-star general, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, supposedly, we are told, was fired from DIA by the Obama administration because he objected to the demonization of Putin and Russia and thought the military of the United States should focus more on ISIS and the Islamic terrorism in the Middle East.

“Well, Mike Flynn is—he will be, now—the National Security Advisor. He is, reportedly, sitting next to Donald Trump and making all the decisive votes on who shall be the other key figures for the Trump administration and in terms of defense, national security, uh, and so forth. (c. 9:12)

On US foreign policy under President Trump, advisor Walid Phares, Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and their ostensible opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is ‘the mother of the mujahedeen, Al Qaeda’, et al.

“So, Mike Flynn, we are told that, uh, he’s a good guy because he later admitted, after being in favour of the invasion of Iraq by Bush in 2003, said that was actually a mistake, looking back on it. He said it’s a strategic mistake. It’s not a tragic mistake, but a strategic—he’s a military man. Okay.

“The Flynn policy is connected very much with the policies of Benjamin Netanyahu. This may shock some of your listeners. But let’s go to another person—Walid Phares, Trump’s advisor on terrorism in the Middle East. Well, Walid Phares gave an interview in the Egyptian press where he said that Donald Trump plans to back legislation to outlaw the Muslim Brotherhood. Now, keep in mind, Huma Abedin, the right-hand, uh—I don’t know what you want to call it—of Hillary Clinton for the last, since she was 19 years old, the estranged wife of, uh, Mr. Weiner, the former congressman. Huma Abedin is a Muslim Brother. She’s a member of a death cult out of Egypt called the Muslim Brotherhood. Her mother is a Muslim brother. They call it the Sisterhood ‘cos it’s an all-man’s society. But there are females. And Huma and her mother are members of that female branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. (c. 10:42)

“It’s a terrorist organisation. It’s the mother of organisation of the mujahideen, to al-Qaeda of Osama bin Laden. It’s a CIA project, that goes back to the 1920s in Egypt, but when British intelligence was working with them. But, uh, during the Second World War, they were in Nazi Germany broadcasting into Palestine hate broadcasts against the Jews. And this, now, is on the bad list of, apparently, of the Trump Presidency.

“But look more closely at: Who is Walid Phares, the advisor of Trump? You know? He didn’t just drop out of a tree somewhere. He’s a Senior Fellowon a very small and highly politicised think-tank in Washington called the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

“Now, the FDD—let’s call it the FDD—was set up in the wake of September 11, 2001. The moneybags for it come from the notorious Sheldon Adelson, a friend of Donald Trump at the Las Vegas and Macao gambling casino billionaire, who gave the Trump campaign $25 million in the closing days and who, also, is the main financial supporter of Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli Likud. (c. 12:07)

BONNIE FAULKNER: “[exhales]”

DR. F. WILLIAM ENGDAHL: “Other backers of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where’s Trump’s Middle East terrorist advisor comes from, include the whiskey heirs Samuel and Edgar Bronfman; Wall Street billionaire speculators Michael Steinhart and Paul Singer; every single one of them are Israel first-, Netanyahu/Likud-connected.

“The vice president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies is a man[sic] called Toby Dershowitz. He spent 14 years as AIPAC communications head. For those of you, who don’t know, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has been described by John Mearshiemer of the University of Chicago as, quote, ‘an agent of the Israeli government with a stranglehold on the United States Congress with its power and influence.’

“Donald Trump was a featured speaker in the March 2016 AIPAC annual meeting, as, of course, was Hillary. (c. 13:02)

“Okay, now, let’s slowly go back to Mike Flynn, the man, who will head up the National Security Council. But his plan is to change the powers of the National Security Council and the advisor to the president to make him the sole powerful figure of the entire U.S. intelligence community with power to hire or fire. If the director of the CIA doesn’t suit his liking, he’s gone. This is the bill, that Mike Flynn is advocating in the Trump Presidency. We’ll see how that goes.

“And Flynn agrees that the Iran Nuclear deal that Obama made with Iran should be scrapped. He calls Iran a state-sponsor of terrorism. So, that’s something, that Netanyahu finds very nice.

“But here’s the interesting thing. For those of you, who have the memory that goes back to the 1970s and world geopolitics, Flynn co-authored a book, that was published here this year with a man named Michael Ledeen. Now, I’m an author. I’ve written nine books in—over the years. And you don’t just co-author a book with any bloke on the street. You have to have someone, whose thoughts are in full harmony with yours, otherwise it doesn’t work. (c. 14:32)

“Well, who is Michael Ledeen? He’s also a freedom scholar at—well, isn’t this interesting?—at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

“Uh, CIA director James Woolsey III, a frothing-at-the-mouth neocon, who talked about a 30 Years War after 9/11, and whose rumoured for some top position in the Trump project, is a member of the FDD, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ leadership council.

“So, now, we begin to get an idea this, uh, whole foreign policy of Trump. Let’s step back a little bit.

On the Shanghai Corporation, a ‘platform to erode the institutions of nation states in favour of global corporate rule

“A year ago, the foreign policy strategy, that had been followed since 9/11 by George W. Bush and Cheney by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, et al., was a catastrophic failure. The decision by Washington to create a coup d’état in Ukraine to drive a wedge between the European Union, especially Germany and Russia to break the economic links, that were growing very, very strong because it’s a natural fit.

“Well, that coup d’état had a backfire effect, a boomerang effect. It drove Russia closer to China. And it created the political nightmare, that Zbigniew Brzezinski talks about in his famous 1997 book, The Grand Chessgame[sic]. The cohesion of Eurasia—now, if anyone takes out a map and looks at the landspace of Russia, which goes all the way to the Pacific, Vladivostok, and the land space of China, and look a the countries, who are in between, are all members of something called the Shanghai Corporation organization. And the fact that China is building a network of high-speed, cutting edge, state-of-the-art railways, infrastructure, crisscrossing all of this space, including Russia, then we begin to see that the patriarchs, or the oligarchs, who viewed the United States as their kind of platform to destroy the world and destroy nation states all over the world, they were beginning to lose everywhere. And when the president of a small country, the Phillippinnes, which has been occupied by the United States since 1898, calls the President of the United States a son of a whore, then you know the the credibility and the, uh, the influence, the soft power of the United States is really hurting. [7] (c. 17:24)

“So, everywhere. Turkey, after the failed CIA coup with Fetullah Gulen back in July of this year. [Erdoğan] began making very, very strong moves toward cooperation, not only with Russia, but with the Shanghai Corporation countries, with Eurasia. And it’s a natural fit. The Turkish future isn’t the European Union. The European Union is collapsing. It’s falling apart. Turkey is beginning to sense its economic future lies with Russia, lies with cooperation with China and the high speed rail links, that would be a natural fit for the Turkish economy.

“So, something drastic had to be done. And that drastic something, from the standpoint of the US oligarchy or patriarchs—the silly old patriarchs, as I call them sometimes—is called Donald Trump. (c. 18:23)

“And the job of Donald Trump is, through deception, to split Russia from China. You have to divide and rule. That combination is something the US cannot defeat, as long as it’s growing. So, they have to start making a courtship of Putin and say, listen, let’s make a deal, like Trump would say [chuckles] and whisper pretty things in the ears of Vladimir Putin and most Russians. The Russian media, I know—I’ve travelled to Russia quite often. My books are translated in the Russian language, my articles as well. I know many, many Russians. The Russian media is probably more pro-Donald Trump than the US media. They think this is finally—you know, so tired of this: Every bad thing that happens in the world is because of Putin. It’s like being mobbed. And, finally, here comes Trump whispering friendly things. (c. 19:22)

“But that’s the game, to shift away from the Muslim Brotherhood card, that was the Obama administration geostrategy, using radical Islam as a proxy for expanding empire—if you wanna call it—to using Israel, using the Mossad, using the Israeli defence forces and all of the geopolitical leverage, that Israel has in the Middle East and other places, which is considerable as their strategic weapon. At the same time, this thing about making America great again, it’s more becoming clear what Trump and his economic advisors are talking about is a Reagan kind of rebuilding of the American military might. The Navy has been allowed to deteriorate over the last 20 or 30 years, significantly. The spending on the Pentagon is so out of control the auditor general last summer, uh, the inspector general, who is responsible for the audits of the service branches certified that there were $6.5 trillion dollars of US Army expenses in recent years, that doesn’t have a paper trail. There is no audit trail possible—$6.5 trillion dollars. Look at this all-purpose, all-service fighter jet. It’s gonna cost tax payers $1.3, $1.5 trillion dollars for something, that’s a heap of junk. It doesn’t work. (c. 21:09)

“So, with a shoe-string budget, after the invitation to intervene in Syria against the terrorists, Russia demonstrated that with a shoestring budget they had developed military technologies, that are leading edge, not just state-of-the-art, leading edge and, literally, shocked the Pentagon military strategists what Russia has accomplished in the last ten years, quietly.

“But when the US announced that it was going for missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic in 2007, if you recall then, Vladimir Putin, in his first presidency, was invited to Munich for the International Security Conference, an annual conference. He gave a speech. And he said, to say that this missile defence in Poland and the Czech Republic is aimed at rogue states, like Iran or North Korea, is, as we say in Russia, like using your right hand to scratch your left ear. It’s nonsense. This is aimed at Russia. And it is aimed at Russia. (c. 22:18)

“So, since that time, of course, it’s greatly expanded. NATO troops are being mounted on the border of Russia. Uh, the US—Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary for eastern Europe and Europe—and Turkey also, by the way—uh, brought a bunch of neo-nazis into the regime in Kiev when they ousted the democratically-elected president—he may have been a thief; but he was democratically elected—and, uh, put in a bunch of fascist oligarchs, that are simply looting and plundering Ukraine and making war against the eastern parts of Ukraine. It’s just a—it’s a failed state. That is the US handiwork. That’s the Washington project.

“So, something had to be done. And that something is what you see shaping up with Trump. (c. 23:12)

“They’re going to make China into the enemy image. They’re gonna try to split off Russia through hook and crook, through disinformation, through—who knows what. They’ll probably lift the sanctions at some point, uh, to try to get Russia off guard and try to sow seeds of discord between Russian and China. And, then, with that, they’re gonna target China massively. They’ve already begun it with this so-called accidental phone call between Trump and the president of Taiwan, breaching some 40 years of diplomatic protocol. (c. 23:53)

Trump’s new team comes from the “war faction of the Bush-Cheney administration”

“So, this is the Trump presidency. Michael Ledeen is the godfather—the co-author with Flynn of this book—he’s the godfather of the neoconservatives. He’s the mentor of Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, the war of faction of George W. Bush. This is Donald Trump.” (c. 24:13)

BONNIE FAULKNER: “You’ve been listening to the voice of author and political analyst William Engdahl. I’m Bonnie Faulkner. This is Guns and Butter. Today is the fund drive, our December Fund Drive on KPFA. (c. 24:31)

[Bonnie Faulkner continued with her remarks, focusing on appeals for listener sponsorship of free speech radio KPFA, the world’s original listener-sponsored free speech radio station, which PBS and NPR later copied, but in a non-free speech manner with corporate underwriting.](c. 25:17)

“I’d love to get some support on the phone for KPFA radio, for the Pacifica Radio Network. Please give us a call. 1.800.439-5732. 1.800.439-5732. $110 tax-deductible donation to KPFA and we would be delighted to provide you with William Engdahl’s newest book, The Lost Hegemon: Whom the gods would destroy. Of course, this is a history of the Muslim Brotherhood, the mujihedeen, al-Qaeda, ISIS, and the United States CIA involvement with this War of Terror against Muslim jihadis. 1.800.439-5732. (c. 26:13)

“In about a minute or two, I’m going to play you a description of the book by the author, William Engdahl. The Lost Hegemon, of course, refers to the United States.

“In his foreword to the book, The Lost Hegemon: Whom the gods would destroy, he talks about the Islamic state and the lost hegemon.

ISIS, later calling itself IS, had been created as a joint project by the CIA and Israeli Mossad to combine psychotic mercenaries, posing as Islamic jihadists gathered from around the world, Chechnya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, even Chinese-Turkish Xinjian province in what the CIA called ‘Operation Hornet’s Nest’ when some Israeli journalist experts pointed out that the letters I-S-I-S stood for the English name of Mossad—Israeli Secret Intelligence Service. The jihadis quickly proclaimed, over YouTube, a new name—Islamic State, or IS—in what appeared to be clumsy cover-up attempt. (c. 27:27)

“That is just one paragraph from William Engdahl’s foreword to his new book, The Lost Hegemon: Whom the gods would destroy.

[Bonnie Faulkner continues with her remarks, focusing on appeals for listener sponsorship of free speech radio KPFA.](c. 28:08)

“I’m Bonnie Faulkner. This is Guns and Butter. I think what I would like to do right now is play you a brief six-minute description by the author of his new book, The Lost Hegemon: Whom the gods would destroy.”

[broadcast cuts to pre-recorded interview clip](c. 28:26)

BONNIE FAULKNER: “Could you talk a bit about your new book, The Lost Hegemon: Whom the gods would destroy? What is your new book about?”

DR. F. WILLIAM ENGDAHL: “It’s about an organisation. It’s about the Muslim Brotherhood, primarily. But, uh, it’s about the marriage—I call it, in the book, ‘a marriage made in hell’—between the Central Intelligence Agency, back in the early 1950s, at the end of World War II, beginning in the Cold War, and their discovery in Munich, Germany, of all places, of secret networks, that were discovered by the Nazis, Hitler, and used—they were networks—Muslim Brotherhood networks used against Soviet Russia and communism because they regard communism as the infidels. And the CIA realised that these particular Muslims had nothing to do with the religion. They had such a fanatical hatred, that they were a beautiful weapon. (c. 29:39)

“Well, then, they got more involved with the organisation. And the station chief of the CIA in Cairo at that time, Miles Copeland, years ago—I talked with him before his death when was retired—he kind of, you know, like old men do sometimes, uh, warriors or whatever, they wanna brag a little bit about what they’ve done. But, uh, he admitted that he smuggled the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood from Egypt into Saudi Arabia after they had been banned by Nasser when they tried to assassinate him—the president of Egypt.

“And, there, began one of the most perverse marriages in modern history. The Muslim Brotherhood, with their political activism, their messianic political activism, combined—and it’s a death cult, explicitly a death cult, by the teachings of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of it in Egypt—together with the most reactionary, pre-feudal Bedouin stream of Islam; if you wanna call it a religion, call it Wahhabism. And the Muslim Brotherhood provided the scholars and the madrasas and the universities in Saudi Arabia because they didn’t have enough, uh—you know, you come out of the desert a generation ago and all you know how to do is take care of your camel. I’m not being cynical. This is the state of the culture in Saudi Arabia today. Look at how they treat women. (c. 31:19)

“So, that became—the oil riches of Saudi Arabia financed the worldwide agenda of the World Muslim League[sic], which is a Muslim Brotherhood. They expanded into Pakistan. They expanded into Afghanistan and many other countries in between and beyond. And that all became connected with the CIA, and became, what I describe in the book in great detail with footnotes and documentation, it became the project of the CIA called Osama bin Laden and the mujahideen against the Soviet Red Army in Afghanistan, the CIA project that took ten years to, uh, bring it to a close.

“And, then, the CIA, brought those Muslim Brotherhood and mujahideen. They flew them into former Soviet Union Azerbaijan, created a regime change, coup, a coup d’état there, that would save British Petroleum and the American oil companies against the Russian. And that used to be part of the Soviet Union, keep in mind, in 1991, ’92. (c. 32:29)

“And, then, they brought them into Chechnya, where an old Soviet pipeline went from Baku in Azerbaijan into Russia and on to the world market. Well, if British Petroleum is gonna build a pipeline, they’re gonna have to destroy the Russian pipeline. So, they brought in the terrorists to create the Chechen War during the time of Yeltsin. And, from there, Boznia and Herzegovina, in Yugoslavia against the Serbs and so on, right down to, uh, al-Qaeda in Iraq, al-Qaeda in Syria morphed into something called the Islamic State in Iraq. And, then, I think somebody realised that I-S-I-S is the abbreviation sometimes used by the Mossad for, uh, the Hebrew designation of the Mossad. And they thought, maybe we better change it to I-S, so nobody is tempted to thread that connection. That’s speculation. But some Israeli journalists have made that speculation. (c. 33:29)

“In any case, the book deals with this, including in Turkey, a fascinating figure, that almost has totally taken over the institutions of power in Turkey over the past 30 years, named Fethullah Gülen, who lives in exile in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania since 1998, even though he, up until 2013, was a supporter of the party of Recep Erdoğan, the president of Turkey now. They had a falling out, [since] Gülen was behind a poorly organised CIA coup, once Erdoğan began to make rapprochement with Putin and turn east against the wishes of Washington. (c. 34:21)

“So, the book details this. It’s unique as far as the research, most of the literature on the subject. Uh, it puts together a pattern from the standpoint of U.S. geopolitics, that has not been done until now. But that’s the broad outline of the book.” (c. 34:44)

BONNIE FAULKNER: “That’s the voice of William Engdahl, describing his new book, which is our premium today for a $110 dollar, tax-deductible donation to KPFA.

“The Lost Hegemon: Whom the gods would destroy” (c. 35:03)

[Bonnie Faulkner continues with her remarks, focusing on appeals for listener sponsorship of free speech radio KPFA.](c. 35:23)

“He’s written some very famous, very incredible books.”

[Bonnie Faulkner continues with her remarks, focusing on appeals for listener sponsorship of free speech radio KPFA.](c. 35:45)

“And, like he said, he doesn’t know any other author, who has written a book like this. It’s a full, detailed analysis and history of the mother of the Muslim Brotherhood, the mujahideen, al-Qaeda, ISIS, the War On Terror. This is a very, very important subject.

“Let me tell you a few of the chapters. It begins with The Islamic State and The Lost Hegemon. And, of course, the lost hegemon is the United States. He analyses this whole policy of the War On Terror and supporting, uh, the jihadists, violent jihadists as a failed policy.

“And, of course, as you heard in our interview today, ‘The Incredible Deception of the Trump Presidency’, there’s going to be, in his view, in his analysis, a shift away from support of Muslim Brotherhood, uh, violent jihadis, into a rapprochement with Russia and political geo-strategy of pulling closer to Israel. (c. 37:02)

“His introduction to the book is called Brotherhood of Death: Organising the New Terror Crusade. Jihad Comes to Germany. Iraq and Washington’s Crusade Against Islam. Roots of Islamic Rage: Sykes-Picot, Balfour, and British Perfidy. Death In the Service of Allah: the Muslim Brothers Are Born. Then, The Muslim Brotherhood Joins Hitler’s Holy War Against the Jews. From Munich to the Soviet Steps: The CIA Funds the Muslim Brothers. The CIA’s Afghan Crusade: Opium Wars, bin Laden, and Mujahideen. Globalizing Jihad: From Afghanistan to Bosnia. Holy War and Heroin In Kosovo and the Caucasus. CIA Backs a New Ottoman Caliphate In Eurasia.

“These are all chapter headings. So, you’ll know exactly the content of this book, The Lost Hegemon. The CIA’s Jihad Comes to Russia. A Holy War Against China. A War On Terror: Using Religion to Make War. And chapter 14, NATO’s Arab Spring And Unintended Consequences.

“Those are the chapter headings from The Lost Hegemon: Whom the gods would destroy by William Engdahl, our gift to you today for a $110 donation to KPFA. (c. 38:45)

[Bonnie Faulkner continues with her remarks, focusing on appeals for listener sponsorship of free speech radio KPFA. Also mentioned is the KPFA Crafts Fair at the Craneway Pavilion.](c. 41:10)

“We’re offering today, the newest book by William Engdahl, um, The Lost Hegemon: Whom the gods would destroy. And, that, of course, is a history of the Muslim Brotherhood and its involvement with the CIA over many, many decades, a global strategy, that William Engdahl says has been a basically a failure, a disaster. And he also—no, we’re gonna go back to, uh, in a few minutes—I wanna get some people on the phone, get some pledges coming in to KPFA, and we’ll go back to this interview.” (c. 41:44)

“This interview, hour-long interview, ‘TheIncredible Trump Deception‘—uh, we’re gonna have the full hour-long interview up on the Guns and Butter website, GunsAndButter.org, within a few days, so you can hear the whole thing. We’ll get back to some of it. It’s his analysis of what the Trump Presidency means, where it’s going, who his appointees are, what the agenda is.

“Of course, he has talked in the beginning, that I broadcast at the beginning of the hour, about, um—well, I guess he hasn’t gotten to that part yet. We’re preparing for, he believes, the US is preparing for a new war, that it’s gonna take many, many years to get ready for this war. He doesn’t think they’re going to really pull it off. There’s gonna be a change in strategy, a geopolitical shift to have better relations with Russia to go after China. (c. 42:49)

[Bonnie Faulkner continues with her remarks, focusing on appeals for listener sponsorship of free speech radio KPFA.] (c. 45:00)

“Keep this precious resource on the air. I’ve noticed, as many of you have noticed, that there is a growing crackdown on information websites. The Washington Post had that article listing, uh, fake news websites, 200 of them. And I was reading the list and I thought, oh, my gosh, these are a lot of the websites, that I read every day.

“There is a real crackdown on freedom of speech, of information, uh, now, more important than ever to support KPFA, to support the Pacifica Network. This is an incredible resource, the kind of analysis and information and authors and analysts, that we bring you weekly on Guns and Butter wouldn’t be heard on any other radio station. This is so important to support KPFA. (c. 45:51)

“A $25 dollar donation makes you a Member of KPFA for a year. Those $25 dollar donations—donations in any amount—are very important to KPFA. Not everyone can afford to donate $110 dollars. $25 donations go a long way. The important thing to do is to call in and support the station. 1.800.439-5732.

“Well, as long as we have, uh, a few minutes left, I’d like to hear—let’s play a little bit more of this interview, that I did with William Engdahl.”

[broadcast cuts to pre-recorded interview clip](c. 46:31)

On the “Oligarchs/Patriarchs” and “Plan B” for positioning Trump into power

BONNIE FAULKNER: “You’ve described the Trump Presidency as the installPlan B President.”

DR. F. WILLIAM ENGDAHL: “Yeah.”

BONNIE FAULKNER: “You’ve kind of started to talk about what Plan B is.”

DR. F. WILLIAM ENGDAHL: “M-hm.”

BONNIE FAULKNER: “You have written that Donald Trump was put into office to prepare America for war.”

DR. F. WILLIAM ENGDAHL: “Yeah.”

BONNIE FAULKNER: “Now, of course, the people, that have been, uh, listening to his campaign would, uh, probably not think that.”

DR. F. WILLIAM ENGDAHL: “Sure.”

BONNIE FAULKNER: “But what in your view—what—” [overlapping]

DR. F. WILLIAM ENGDAHL: “Well, he doesn’t want it. But he wants to win the power. The people behind him want him to win the power. They don’t want to freak the population out.”

BONNIE FAULKNER: “Well, what, in your view, would this war look like? And what would be a time-frame? And maybe you can talk about that in conjunction with some of these other cabinet appointees. I mean—”

DR. F. WILLIAM ENGDAHL: “Sure.”

BONNIE FAULKNER: “—he’s got quite a few of ’em now.”

DR. F. WILLIAM ENGDAHL: “Yeah. I think what they realise is that the banks of Wall Street, the financial crash of 2008, the fact that the six criminal banks of JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and so forth, have been on artificial life support, now, for eightyears at point-two-five [.25] interest rate of the Fed. Uh, this this isn’t a military base to win a war. [sic] They want—Russia did in Syria, that tiny little shoestring budget, that they deployed in Syria. If that’s combined with the, uh, military buildup, that’s going on in China, then you have the capacity to defend the Eurasian landspace against anything the United States can send. (c. 48:17)

“Keep in mind the agenda of people like Zbigniew Brzezinski, the agenda of David Rockefeller, the agenda of these oligarchs. And I assume that your listeners understand the term oligarch because that’s what these people are. They’re patriatrchs, really. Their agenda is new world order, one world government, glob—this isn’t conspiracy theory. This is their agenda. David Rockefeller even stated so on his autobiography several years ago. He said, if this is the charge I’m charged with, I’m proud of it.

“So, Zbigniew Brzezinski, back in the ’70s, in his Technotronic Era book, writes about the fact that the nation state has to be eliminated. [8]

“So, who are the strongest nation states in the world today? China, Russia, Iran. And the three of them are cooperating in a way, that never has taken place before. So, this is the war that they are preparing for. I think, my own guess is, it’ll take between four, six, or eight years, something of that time-frame. It won’t work in the end. It’s a failed strategy. But that’s all they know. Their mentality is going back to 1939, Roosevelt and the military buildup for World War II. That’s the, you know, template they have in their mind that we just do that again on a technology and blah-deeh, blah-dee, blah. (c. 49:51)

“So, it’s already—Trump has pledged the biggest naval buildup, under his presidency, since the huge naval buildup of Reagan. And, you know, you look at the Secretary of State—for the first time since George Marshall, the beginning of the Cold War—there’s a retired military general as Defense Secretary. There had been a tradition to always have a civilian as head of defense.

“Now, we’ve got a man, whose known as the Warrior Monk, Mad Dog Mathis. , the man that I would say, if I were a clinical psychologist, I would call him a psychopath from statements he’s made and things he’s done. The soldiers love him. When you’re in the trenches, he’s down there with you. That’s said to be the case.

“But, as Trump said, he’s the, uh—what did he call him?—uh, a modern-day General Patton. Well, General Patton wasn’t exactly [chuckles] a beautiful human being, either. So, this is really not a group of pacifists, that is coming around Trump. I think what you’re gonna see—the choice of Wilbur Ross as Commerce Secretary, together with his campaign manager, Steve Mnuchin, former partner at Goldman Sachs, as was his father. Steve Mnuchin, a former partner with the, uh, Soros Fund, management of George Soros. Steve Mnuchin, a business associate of Donald Trump, going back to Trump’s casino days. (c. 51:46)

“They are going to create, probably, some kind of national infrastructure bank or fund. They’re gonna have a strong dollar policy, the way, uh, Bush, Sr. had, or actually, Reagan-Bush from 1980 until about 1985, when the dollar got so high it was threatening everything. And they had this Plaza Accord meeting and had Japan, uh, bring the dollar down.

“But, uh, the policy will be to start interest rate increases with Europe in the critical bad shape its in, especially after the Italian referendum, the European Bank crises, and so forth, it won’t take much to create a massive capital flight out of the Eurozone into—where you gonna go?—the US dollar. Trump’s building infrastructure. There are new projects. So, there’s gonna be hundreds of billions of dollars coming into the dollar. That’ll drive up the dollar as well. That’ll suck capital out from China. [9] That’ll suck capital out from the emerging markets, the BRICS countries and so forth. And it’s gonna be as simple as that, I think. (c. 53:03)

“Wilbur Ross, he cut his teeth for about 14 years, as I recall, for Rothschild, Incorporated, the New York arm of the British and French Rothschild Banking group, restructuring bankrupt companies. So, he’s gonna restructure bankrupt America, perhaps. [10]

“But it has, as their aim, to rebuild as the Project for a New American Century said back in 2000, rebuild America’s defenses for war, not just to play monopoly or dominoes or something. And that’s a bit crazy, but that’s, you know, that’s—”

BONNIE FAULKNER: “It’s interesting what you’re saying about their economic plan because I was reading a financial analyst on the internet trying to sell his analysis to investors.”

DR. F. WILLIAM ENGDAHL: “Yeah.”

BONNIE FAULKNER: “And he was saying exactly the same thing, basically, that there’s gonna be flight capital[sic] out of Europe into a safe haven. And it’s gonna create a stock market boom in the US.” (c. 54:14)

DR. F. WILLIAM ENGDAHL: “Yeah. It’s, uh, so clear to me. The people, that, you know—most of the intelligent people I speak with, here, in Europe, uh, where I live, in Germany, uh, they just don’t get it. They, they can’t quite see where it’s headed. But, today, the Prime Minister of Italy resigned because he lost a referendum, uh, Renzi. The Renzi government resigned.

“Now, the Italian banks—” [Bonnie Faulkner’s voice overlaps]

[end of pre-recorded interview clip]

BONNIE FAULKNER: “That’s the voice of William Engdahl. I was speaking to him about the coming economic situation, that Europe is going down. There’s gonna be flight capital [sic] out of Europe, creating a stock market boom here, at least temporarily, I suppose. He is the author of a new book, The Lost Hegemon—which refers to the United States—Whom the gods would destroy. This is a book, a brand new book, a history of the Muslim Brotherhood through the mujahideen; al-Qaeda; ISIS, their involvement with the CIA; the War On Terror as a failed strategy. (c. 55:25)

[Bonnie Faulkner continues with her remarks, focusing on appeals for listener sponsorship of free speech radio KPFA.] (c. 56:13)

“I just wanted to mention briefly that the entire hour-long interviewon the coming Trump Presidency, all of his appointees, and how William Engdahl thinks this is gonna go, that will be up—the full interview—at GunsAndButter.org within the next few days. I’d also like to say that, next week, we’re gonna do—I’m gonna do—a whole hour-long interview with William Engdahl on his book about The Lost Hegemon, about the Muslim Brotherhood. (c. 56:44)

[Bonnie Faulkner continues with her remarks, focusing on appeals for listener sponsorship of free speech radio KPFA.] (c. 56:57)

“I’m so excited to have him on the show. I’ve wanted to have William Engdahl on for years. And I just haven never gotten around to it, until now. (c. 56:06)

[Bonnie Faulkner continues with her remarks, focusing on appeals for listener sponsorship of free speech radio KPFA.] (c. 59:00)

“But, you know, the fundraisers are kind of fun. It gives me a chance to come in live, which I always enjoy. And, also, it’s a way to give sort of an extended platform to some of these incredible books and authors and DVDs.

“1.800.439-5732. I’m Bonnie Faulkner. This is Guns and Butter. Please send me an email with any of your comments to faulkner@gunsandbutter.org. Visit William Engdahl’s website at WilliamEngdahl.com. He has a newsletter, that he sends out. You could sign up for that. GunsAndButter.org. I’ll have his full interview up in a week. And, also, I’m hoping to see a lot of you at the Craneway Crafts Fair. 1.800.439-5732.

[Working draft transcript of actual radio broadcast by Messina for Lumpenproletariat and Guns and Butter.]

GUNS AND BUTTER—[14 DEC 2016] (synopsis) “A program that investigates the relationships among capitalism, militarism and politics, hosted by Bonnie Faulkner.”

[“Thank you.” Board operator: “It is now one o’clock here at KPFA, 94.1 FM in Berkeley; 89.3 KPFB in Berkeley; 88.1 KFCF in Fresno; 97.5 K24ABR in Santa Cruz; and online at kpfa.org. Please stay tuned for Guns and Butter.”]

“[via telephone] This is Guns and Butter. [Guns and Butter theme music begins]

“I’m Bonnie Faulkner. Today on Guns and Butter, F. William Engdahl. Today is a fundraiser for KPFA. And I’m offering two of William Engdahl’s books, The New Hegemon: Whom the gods would destroy [sic] and A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order. Both of these books are very important. Today, we’re going to start with William Engdahl’s overview of the American century, or what he calls the debt-slavery system. Lucretia, let’s hear that first track.” (c. 1:25)

On global capitalist imperialism, post-WWII

DR. F. WILLIAM ENGDAHL: “What I would like to do is talk about how I see the world since 1945, since the end the Second World War. And I wanna go back to a project, that was initiated in 1939. It was done in top secrecy. Today, some of the archives have been released by the Council On Foreign Relations, the think-tank set up at the end of the First World War in London, or Versailles, rather, by the bankers, JP Morgan and Rockefeller, their representatives there as well as the leading circles of British strategic policy called the Roundtable. And they created the newer Council On Foreign Relations to coordinate with the Chatham House in London, that they also created at the same time—the Royal Institute for International Affairs—to coordinate a grand strategy across the Atlantic, that would more or less dominate the world. (c. 2:36)

“And, in 1939, in the midst of the Great Depression, before the German Nazi Panzers had rolled into Poland and formally began World War II, the New York Council On Foreign Relations was given a grant by the Rockefeller Foundation to do a project, a top secret project, called War and Peace Studies. War and Peace Studies.

“And the project gathered together some of the top minds, political minds, of America and brought them in. One of the leading figures was ProfessorIsaiah Bowman, then, the president of Johns Hopkins University and a geographer, interesting enough In other words, geography of the world was his expertise. He even called himself, unfortunately—he realised that—America’s Haushofer because Karl Haushofer was the architect, or the ghostwriter, actually, in the 1920s of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf when he was in prison. (c. 3:49)

“And this group operated under the assumption that World War II was about to unfold. And they said: We have to plan now so that America is the survivor of that war and will replace all other contenders as the dominant power on the planet.

“So, they, literally, brought in experts of every part of the globe—central Asia; Asia, Burma; China; India; South America; uh, Africa, of course; Middle East, with the oil. And they worked out plans for dominating the key nations, the key geography spots, the Straits of Malacca with the Navy; the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, all these chokepoints for oil flows or trade flows.

“And they created what was called a project called ‘The United Nations Organisation’, that became official at Dumbarton Oaks. And the idea was to create a geopolitical map of the world where the power of the United States military could dominate that world. And that, more or less, was what emerged from World War II. They waited, these strategists, and Roosevelt was informed of their plans, they waited until quite late into the war—1942—sometime after Pearl Harbor, December 1941, which Roosevelt also had foreknowledge of through cracking the Japanese codes, but let happen in order to mobilise the rage and fear of the American population for a war, a war that was not, initially, against Nazi Germany and Europe. [11]

“And, after that war, the United States emerged. The Federal Reserve Bank had the largest reserves of monetary gold in the world, 70% by some estimates. They had much of the gold of the defeated powers—the Nazi gold and others—and American industry, because of war mobilisation—the aluminum industry; the aircraft industry; the vehicle industry of Detroit; the steel industry, that was used to feed that—was strongest in the world. It was American quality, that was in demand everywhere. Europe was in an ash-heap of rubble and bombed-out cities.

And Europe, also, had no credible currencies. So, they desperately needed to have dollars. And the Marshall Plan, that was proposed and implemented in the end of the ’40s, early ’50s, was actually a way of giving taxpayer dollars, so that they could buy American goods, buy American oil for their own recovery. So, it was not an act of pure charity. It was a very calculated act to get dollars in circulation in Europe. And that allowed the dollar to dominate the reserves of the emerging post-war central banks of Europe—the Bank of England; the Bank of France; the Bank of Italy; and so forth; and, ultimately, the Bundesbank, when that was allowed to be created. (c. 7:49)

“The process of American hegemony went flawlessly, one could almost say. It wasn’t quite flawless. They made a coup d’état in Iraq with the CIA and MI6 of Britain in the eraly 1950s against a nationalist, who wanted to have a fair share of the revenues of British Petroleum from the extraction of Iranian oil. His name was Mohammad Mosaddegh. (c. 8:24)

[snip]

[On Nixon unilaterally closing the gold window, effectively ending the gold standard when he ended convertibility of the U.S. dollar into gold by declaring that he’s ripping up the Bretton Woods agreement, which were signed in 1944 at the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference; Dr. Engdahl incorrectly refered to it as a “treaty”.]

(c. 15:00) [Bilderberg Group meets in May of 1973. Its organisers hand-picked 78 ruling class elites, including Henry Kissinger to discuss a challenge to the power of the OPEC nations and what to do about “recycling oil dollars” or “petrodollars into their banks.]

[USA jacks up its interest rates, causing global financial turmoil, such as the Latin American financial crisis. Then, austerity politics and privatization and neoliberalism prevailed thereafter.]

(c. 28:00) [Misunderstanding (or being unaware of) modern monetary theory (MMT), Dr. Engdahl incorrectly stated the U.S. is ‘more than $3 trillion dollars in deficit’. We recall Bonnie Faulkner flew to Rimini, Italy in 2012 to cover an international conference on MMT. Faulkner broadcast seven hours worth of coverage on Guns and Butter, during which Dr. Stephanie Kelton (UMKC) taught us that, at the federal level, “taxes don’t pay for anything”. This is an undisputed fact of our monetary system. So, the USA doesn’t need to tax its populace to raise money for government spending. Another common myth, which Dr. Engdahl unfortunately seems to believe, suggests that the USA needs to borrow dollars from China and other places. It is incorrectly believed that the interest, which the USA owes to its bondholders, for example, is the USA ‘borrowing’ dollars from China and so forth. Yes, the USA issues bonds, for which it pays interest. But the USA every day makes good on those bonds, which many Americans also hold. The USA faces no risk of insolvency as it is the sovereign currency issuer of the US dollar. For more on MMT, check out the blog for the heterodox economics department at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC); it’s called NewEconomicPerspectives.org.]

[Bonnie Faulkner continued with her remarks, but with a focus on appealing for listener sponsorship of free speech radio KPFA.]

[Bonnie Faulkner played another clip from her interview with Dr. Engdahl on his ‘description of the Lost Hegemon’.]

[Bonnie Faulkner continues with her remarks, but with a focus on appealing for listener sponsorship of free speech radio KPFA.]

[Bonnie Faulkner played a clip from an upcoming Guns and Butter show with Dr. Engdahl on the ‘Trump Deception’.]

[Bonnie Faulkner continues with her remarks, but with a focus on appealing for listener sponsorship of free speech radio KPFA.]

[This transcript will be expanded as time constraints, and/or demand or resources, allow.]

***

[1] About the author: F. William Engdahl is an award-winning geopolitical analyst, strategic risk consultant, author, and lecturer. He has authored nine books that have been translated into 14 foreign languages including Chinese, German, Japanese, including the international best-selling A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics; Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation; Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order His works trace the basis of the rise of the US as an international superpower, the emergence after 1945 of America as a new kind of Empire, one not based upon sole military occupation. It was an ‘informal empire,’ where control of finance, of the basic food chain, of energy—above all of oil, would be the basis for what would become the greatest concentration of power in history, an American Hegemon, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. William Engdahl grew up in Texas. After earning a degree in politics from Princeton University, and graduate study in comparative economics at Stockholm University, he worked as an economist and investigative journalist in the USA and Europe. He was Named Visiting Professor at Beijing University of Chemical Technology and delivers talks and private seminars around the world on different aspects of economics and politics with focus on geopolitical events. www.williamengdahl.com.

Hegemonic stability theory (HST) is a theory of international relations, rooted in research from the fields of political science, economics, and history. HST indicates that the international system is more likely to remain stable when a single nation-state is the dominant world power, or hegemon.[1] Thus, the fall of an existing hegemon or the state of no hegemon diminishes the stability of the international system. When a hegemon exercises leadership, either through diplomacy, coercion, or persuasion, it is actually deploying its “preponderance of power.” This is called hegemony, which refers to a state’s ability to “single-handedly dominate the rules and arrangements …[of] international political and economic relations.”[2] HST can help analyze the rise of great powers to the role of world leader or hegemon, which have been ongoing since the 15th century. Also, it can be used to understand and to calculate the future of international politics through the discussion of the symbiotic relation between the declining hegemon and its rising successor.[3]

Charles P. Kindleberger is one of the scholars most closely associated with HST, and is regarded by some as the theory’s father.[6] In the 1973 book The World in Depression: 1929-1939, he argued that the economic chaos between World War I and World War II that led to the Great Depression was partly attributable to the lack of a world leader with a dominant economy. Kindleberger’s reasoning touched upon more than economics, however: the central idea behind HST is that the stability of the global system, in terms of politics, international law, and so on, relies on the hegemon to develop and enforce the rules of the system.[7]

The project called the Trump Presidency has just two months before its formal beginning. Yet already the hopes and fantasies of much of the world are making him into something and someone Donald Trump most definitely is not.

Donald Trump is yet another project of the same bo2ring old patriarchs who try again and again to create a one world order that they control absolutely, a New World Order that one close Trump backer once referred to as universal fascism.

Ignore the sometimes fine rhetoric in some of his speeches. Talk is cheap. If we consider rather the agenda that’s taking form even in these very early days of cabinet naming, we can see that Donald Trump is the same agenda of war and global empire as Obama, as Bush before him, as Bill Clinton and Clinton’s “tutor”, George H.W. Bush before him. There is no good side to what the world is about to experience with President Trump.

He will tell you just what many of you want to hear. Trump the showman will tell you he will make America great again; Trump will say he will ship at least 3 million illegals back across the Rio Grande; Trump will introduce a bill to declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization; Trump will bring jobs back to America from China and other low wage countries; Trump will sit down with Putin and work out some kind of a deal to calm things down; Trump will scrap the Iran nuclear deal of Obama…

Often during this election campaign, which was more a Hollywood “D1” grade movie than any honest debate of policies and ideas candidate Trump made statements that resonated with the “silent majority” of not only so-called blue collar workers, but also the disenfranchised middle class whose earnings have been declining in real terms since the 1970’s. Trump, like an earlier actor-President named Ronald Reagan, has a talent to make himself sound sincere.

[7] Of course, President Rodrigo Duterte may not hold much credibility as a character witness, given the fact that his administration is being charged with human rights violations and killings. See Hard Knock Radio for 21 DEC 2016.

“The technotronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities.”

[9] Fact-check pending.

[10] Fact-check pending.

[11] The apparently deliberate and self-serving late entry of the United States armed forces into WWII is also documented in Oliver Stone’s The Untold History of the United States.